The Villa Medicis

INA00640

Note

The Villa Medicis

Collection title

Hello France, hello Europe

ID

INA00640

Source

INA (FR)

First broadcast date

06/19/1988

Production year

1988

Abstract

Visit the Villa Medicis led by its then director, the man of letters and television, Jean-Marie Drot; built north of Rome in 1560 on the Pincio, the Villa hosts for two centuries the Academy of France that houses each year, 25 artists.

Type

video

Production companies

TF1 - Own production

Broadcaster

TF1

Audiovisual form

Magazine

Personalities

Drot Jean Marie

Primary theme

Art, Culture and Knowledge

Secondary themes

Tourism and cultural sites / Architecture

Period of events

From 1500 to 1800

Map locations

Italy - Centre - Rome

Original language

French

Media running time

3m42

Transcript

- silence

- Jean-Marie Drot, hello, thank you for hosting us at the Villa Medici.

- We will keep the door wide open…

- It is at the same time a place where guests of several disciplines are hosted, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, those are the traditions,

- and since 1971, writers, photographs, even movie makers, art historians are added.

- May be the second mission of the villa, a dialogue with Italy, with Rome, that has been hosting guests since Louis XIVth’s time.

- Jean-Marie Drot, how did this small patch of France remain like that in Rome, as we are here in the Villa Medici in France?

- Yes, well, listen, it happened very naturally, it was bought by Napoleon in 1803, and since then guests have been here,

- 1803 is also the year when music composers came to meet painters, engravers, sculptors and architects.

- The architects arrived under the reign of Louis XVth, and musicians as a fact, you know the most famous ones, who came here,

- Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy. Since 1803 there is like that every year a succession of generations…

- Jean-Marie Drot, I wouldn’t like take advantage from you…

- We visit.

- So a big park there, we arrive in front what is the skeleton of the building of the Villa Medici…

- This is the inner façade, which is very different from the one that has a view on Rome, here you have a theatre side,

- almost a feminine side, that contrasts with the façade of the outside that has the perfect look of a fortress dominating Rome.

- We are setting, now, for 89, a great exhibition about the coming back of Italianism in France,

- that is to say the influence in France of Italian architecture over 2 centuries of buildings in France.

- Jean-Marie Drot, if I can remember my classics properly, the director of the Villa Medici is appointed for 10 years.

- You have been here for 3 years.

- 7 years to go, or well, doesn’t the image of the man you once were want to turn back to it?

- Well, you know, I wouldn’t say I left audiovisual, audiovisual left me, rather.

- Malraux, whom I greatly trained with to make this series with him, used to think, and he was right, that TV is the true place of culture sharing, of modernity of our time.

- All this TV was pushed forward into the night and then it disappeared all of a sudden.

- Now we are the witnesses of a small leap, of a comeback. And I reckon that this rebirth, as we are in Italy we can use that word, is happening.

- And I reckon it will happen more and more when we will become conscious, after Malraux, that there is no more democratic device in a way,

- to share everything big, everything beautiful with as many people as possible.

- I believe that TV, TV programs really changed a whole mentality,

- opened the eyes, the ears onto the riches of the world.

- And we don’t see why we would renounce to that, to transform this fabulous tool into a mere tool for selling washing powder.

- We can do better, we can do both.

- I can see you have not lost your touch yet, thank you Jean-Marie Drot for this visit.